INSTINCT AND REASON 243 
It is not necessary to consider here the question of the 
origin of instincts. Some writers regard them as “ inherited 
habits,” while others, with apparent justice, doubt if mere 
habits or voluntary actions repeated till they become a 
“second nature” ever leave a trace upon heredity. Such 
investigators regard instinct as the natural survival of those 
_ methods of automatic response which were most useful to 
the life of the animal, the individuals having less effective 
methods of reflex action having perished, leaving no pos- 
terity. 
An example in point would be the homing instinct of 
the fur-seal. When the arctic winter descends on its home 
in the Pribilof Islands in Bering Sea, these animals take 
to the open ocean, many of them swimming southward as 
far as the Santa Barbara Islands in California, more than 
three thousand miles from home. While on the long swim 
they never go on shore, but in the spring they return to 
the northward, finding the little islands hidden in the arc- 
tic fogs, often landing on the very spot from which they 
were driven by the ice six months before, and their arrival 
timed from year to year almost to the same day. The per- 
fection of this homing instinct is vital to their life. If 
defective in any individual, he would be lost to the herd 
and would leave no descendants. Those who return be- 
come the parents of the herd. As to the others the rough 
sea tells no tales. We know that, of those that set forth, a 
large percentage never comes back. To those that return 
the homing instinct has proved adequate. This must be so 
so long as the race exists. The failure of instinct would 
mean the extinction of the species. 
130. Classification of instincts—The instincts of animals 
may be roughly classified as to their relation to the indi- 
vidual into egoistic and altruistic instincts. 
Egoistic instincts are those which concern chiefly the 
individual animal itself. To this class belong the instincts 
of feeding, those of self-defense and of strife, the instincts 
